Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Here's a 700-word post about how I don't have time to post anything.

I've heard people say that there aren't enough hours in the day. I don't know if I always agree with that, but I usually come around on Wednesday nights; I am quite certain there aren't enough hours in a Wednesday night. This Wednesday night, for example. After working my day-job, running some errands (including visiting the comic shop), reading (almost all of) my new comics and writing a few pieces that need written by tomorrow, I find myself at 1 a.m., the "Comic Shop Comics" feature, the one where I give quick, off-the-cuff reviews of whatever comics I happened to buy at the shop that afternoon, un-written and unlikely to be written, barring an unexpected and unwelcome bout of insomnia or something.

So look for that...maybe Friday-ish...?

In the mean time, you may be wondering what the "scene" was like at my local comic shop today, this being the first Wednesday that those controversial-ish, allocated 3D motion covers of the various decimal point-ed DC comics went on sale, as part of the publisher's "Villains Month" and in conjunction with their first big line-wide crossover story in two years, Forever Evil by writer Geoff Johns (who has written all of their crossovers since 2006 save one) and artist David Finch (who is terrible at drawing comics).

Well, my local comics shop order-er seems to have either ordered judiciously or been smiled upon by the allocators (I seriously have no idea how that was supposed to work, despite the half-dozen articles on the subject I've read), as when I arrived at 5:30 p.m., the new comics rack still contained multiple copies of both the fancy and more costly 3D covers and the regular covers of the issues featuring The Joker, Cyborg Superman, The Creeper, Darkseid and Deadshot (I don't remember the actual titles and don't feel like looking 'em up, because decimal points are stupid; it was a Batman book, a Superman book and three Justice League books though). I bought the regular cover versions of the Two-Face book and the Bizarro book, but I can't remember if there were 3D versions available or not (As far as "reporting" goes, this is not very good reporting, is it?)

I was pretty curious to see these 3D covers in real-life, as they were reportedly pretty awesome, and I liked the way they looked as GIFs online. I imagined them being like those pictures of Jesus where his eyes follow you around the room as you walk.

They weren't that cool though. At least, the Cyborg Superman and Darkseid ones weren't. In both cases, I picked 'em up, tilted them from side to side and up and down, closed and opened the front covers, and then set them atop the graphics novel rack, where no part of them were obscured by shelving or other books, and walked by in both directions, but the movement seemed barely noticeable, and not as neat as the online GIFs.

So, as a gimmick unto themselves, I don't really get them. They're not all that cool. They're not like, say, glow-in-the dark comics covers. Those are the only gimmick covers I ever really liked at all, although I do see how someone could like the ones with the little raised images or logos, as those feel neat on your finger tips, or the occasional die-cut cover, like that one Wolverine comic I got in the '90s wear it looked like a manila folder file on Wolvie with his claw marks on it. Ooh! And that Eclipso comic with the plastic gem hot-glued on! I thought that was kinda neat at the time.

Of the fancy covers, they were all on the regular rack for their regular cover price; I didn't see anything set aside or marked-up to meet some crazy, invented, inflated market demand. There were no crowds of speculators in the shop. And no conversation about them (I think the guys were talking about Venom, of all things, the whole time I was in there).

There were also plenty of copies of Forever Evil on the rack, so my shop's orderer seems to have ordered wisely on those as well. Or maybe he over ordered them and some of the villain books...? I don't know.

I do know that they were completely sold out of DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe, which was tragic, as that was the comic book I was most looking forward to this week.

What were things like in your shop this week? Were they well-stocked with the fancy covers? Were they being sold for cover price? Were there enthusiastic crowds lining up for their Joker comics? Was the He-Man/DC crossover and The Star Wars selling as briskly as Forever Evil?

4 comments:

I saw a couple the Star Wars going out. I went with that and tried Ballistic instead of Creeper. The cover didn't quite sell me yet, and I do hate that redesign, but I have a sick fascination with how DC keeps breaking these characters.

I put in a few hours a week at the LCS; by this evening, all that was left of the 3Ds was Earth 2 and Green Lantern (?!). With allocation, pull customers were covered and about 3–5 went out on the rack.

Yesterday, apparently, plenty of people never seen before in the shop trying to buy multiple copies; even calling in from the next city, "how many copies of __ do you have?"

About Me

J. Caleb Mozzocco is a freelance writer and (extremely) amateur(-ish) artist who lives and works in Ohio.
This is his blog.
You can reach him at jcalebmozzocco@gmail.com.
Creators and publishers who would like their books considered for review here and/or anywhere else he contributes can feel free to contact him at the address above.
Editors and publishers of respectable publications who would like Caleb to write about comics for them are also welcome to contact him and offer him work. He loves money.